decembrie 01, 2011

Risk Perception

Seemingly smart people can make patently dumb choices because the brain is only the organ with which we think we think. Most of our risk perception decision making happens subconsciously, and relies on instinctive psychological cues and subconscious mental shortcuts we have evolved to help us quickly turn the few facts we have into a judgment about what feels safe and what feels dangerous. This instinctive system works wonderfully in many cases. It has, after all, gotten us this far through evolution’s challenging gantlet.